03-30-2012, 03:11 PM
Since I see that topics have been more commonly made listing what could improve LVP, I would like to post my two cents.
I will be posting this topic in 2 different sections of the forum, beta, and in the Las Venturas Playground section, this is so everyone can read it, please beta tests/developers respond in the beta section topic as I will be referring to this as the primary topic. I'm just posting this publicly to let people know my current opinion on LVP, where it stands, and how it can be majorly improved.
First of all, the server is a mess, the site is a mess, everything is a cluttered mess, there's no simplicity, no UI, attempts have been made in the server to make things simpler bit it's just totally wrong.
Website
Lets start with the website...
The website when you first go to sa-mp.nl, you notice that you have a ton of things immediately shoved in your face, including the latest update post from January, this spells disaster, people don't want to see this when they first visit and I do believe it can be simplified. LVP has various connections, servers, and other things, but you don't see any of them there really. I will admit the theme is professional and clean but people simply do not want to read a million walls of text when they first get on. I will use my website for a reference (http://GamerDivision.net/index.php).
If you look at my site you can see that the server IP's are cleanly listed, ready for players to join, LVP has a(n) TeamSpeak, IRC, Minecraft, and SA:MP server, but only the SA:MP server are to be seen on there, and this is a big mistake, people are simply not going to know what to navigate to if they're coming in from the site.
The IRC page, the web version that exists on LVP currently, the Mibbit one, I had to actually go to the forum and run a search just to find it, people are not willing to constantly do this, this issue should be addressed as it would only take 2 minutes of someones time.
The forum theme, it doesn't look bad but everyone has seen the default SMF theme, it's bland and boring, Kase was supposed to do work modifying the theme but clearly this has never happened so I would at least like if someone checked out and tested a few decent themes on the site, who knows, ask people if they like them? See what their opinions are on them? Here's a link to two decent ones I found and just recently posted in the .dev channel.
http://www.dzinerstudio.com/index.php?ac...iew&id=135
http://www.dzinerstudio.com/index.php?ac...w;down=140
SA:MP Server
People who join the SA:MP server are rarely there to stay, and are likely not going to stay if the server contains these things.
- No players
- Crapper UI
- A messy stunt map
- Hackers, lack of staff unable to do anything about it.
- Cluttered messy gamemode.
The LVP gamemode should be redone immediately, no more playing around testing out 2.95.38372523ABDED, the coding needs to be optimized, and redone properly as been bitched about for years now. Think of it this way, you have a box of wires, it needs to be untangled and reorganized, coding is the same method and there should definitely be a plan for how the code will be organized neatly.
For example (and also I think this should definitely be done), the announcements in-game are the same thing over and over again, people get tired of seeing them countless times and just learn to ignore them, mainly because they're never updated with accurate rules that someone who poorly understands English, or just lacks the brain capacity to tell their elbow from their ass can manager to comprehend. The announcements should have their own section, folder of coding that redirects to a simple line by line file that could easily be changed, modified, updated, to allow easy access to have common announcement updates. I'm no coder, but I know for fact this is easy to do and easily possible, so there's really no reason to pull the lazy card with this.
I would also like to just throw out a link to this topic since I'm on this subject. I'm glad this has been addressed before but it should be taken up another notch.
http://forum.sa-mp.nl/index.php?topic=28616.0
Another thing is, what to do when you join the server? That's a good question, what is there to do? People who play here for awhile that there's nothing to do, a wild stunt map appears! *zing* The stunt map the last time I've seen it is a cluttered mess and should be updated, redone from the ground up, maybe just remove it from LV completely, the lack of draw distance on the ramps I really love, because it gives me the chance to experience crashing my plane into a random object in mid flight, because we all love that.
The stunt map needs cleaned up as much as the server itself, when joining other nice servers, I see a clean UI, a warm welcome, a reason to stay, a hook with bait on it. People like seeing their stats, level ups when DM'ing, this is what we need, when you get a kill you should be rewarded and you should know you've been rewarded, this is what DeathMatch needs in the server.
Now for the horrid part, LVP needs roleplay, I know, I just said it, but not some kiddy tea party roleplay just something more dynamic and likely to catch peoples attention longer than the property system will with its max money/property limit, we need level ups, we need some kind of credit/score based system, to let you know you've been in LVP for a long time and that you're progressing in it. This is why games like CoD/battlefield are so successful, you keep playing to get yourself to the next level to get that golden AK47/Desert Eagle you've been wanting.
Minigames should be more rewarding, advertised more, just a bit more everything to them to make them just stand out a bit more, in LVP 3.0, I demand these to be the center of attention, not just a side thing, they're fun as hell, but only when you can find people to play them with you, which brings my onto my next subject.
Development
As said before, coding is a mess, there should be a more organized way developing is handled around here, instead it's always a constant worry about leaked information and when things do happen in LVP people overreact, so what if there's a random Hooger wanting a veteran tag, or a random someone bruting Matthias' account and ripping all the private information on LVP and posting it on a registered domain with a private host. Things need to be less private, more community interactive, it's been in discussion before, LVP going open source, there should be limitations to this of course, because we simply don't want a bunch of LVP's popping up on the server list, something that stamps the name LVP on it. LVP should take more community advice on features, make the CSI section more open and improve on this once time comes.
Rebuilding LVP from the ground up, this would be time consuming, but does it really have to be? Coding is not simple, going through thousands and thousands of lines, but there should definitely be a much more organized system, for example as I posted before about the announcements in-game, they should be organized, each "plugin" having it's own root then an easily managed file outside of it's root file, both being in an isolated folder/section. Similar to how Minecraft bukkit servers run, you have the core that links to everything in the "Plugins" folder, then for each plugin have their own folder. Then each "Plugin" should be universal, easily removed/modifiable, the core of LVP should read each directory in that "Plugin" folder as a plugin, automatically load, and just be much more simple and dynamic.
Example:
Root>(CoreFiles)
Root>LVP>Plugins>Announcements>(Configuration file.porno)
Root>LVP>Plugins>(File that tells core that directory "Announcements" exists.porno)
Simple to understand method, correct? Basically allows features/plugins to be easily hot swapped, removed, added, edited, etc. The existing features should not be removed, just converted over to a new more proper/optimal method of being handled, it allows you to find bugs much more easier.
Community interaction
Something LVP lacks, always has lacked, and really needs to fix. The CSI section of the forum should be more public, should be handled by at least beta testers, people who post on my forums in our support section are allowed to reply to others topics, this allows users to respond, and get their answers faster.
http://gamerdivision.net/index.php?board=15.0
More active announcements on the homepage, as said before, I always love waking up to the morning and reading the hottest news of January.
Trolls should be punished different and more often, we love a common smart-ass of course, but not to the extend that they're still trying to draw from a dry, inactive forum just to pull of his small trollgasm. This makes LVP's staff look bad, draws people away from the forums, and makes the people who actually would love to help and do something about it, face palm.
Ask for peoples opinions, don't just give them an inactive CSI topic and leave them. Ask a bit more or else you will not receive, simple as that. There's no way developers are not going to know what people want unless you let them voice their opinion, and of course, slam the door on those with "opinions" that are to make LVP go down the drain, grenades are cheap, you can toss them in middle of people legitimately fighting, it's cheap, they're not a bad ass, the people who join them trolling are just as retarded, ignore them. BUT, do not ignore those who actually post a legitimate, good idea, at least let them know that their idea is not being accepted rather than just leaving them hanging constantly.
Role Play
I personally am not a role player, but a majority of people are, people find it fun, it is fun, it's a fact. LVP simply needs to understand that it's a fact, not an opinion, LVP does need role play features, advertise somewhat with roleplay, to draw in more players. But it doesn't have to be pathetic role playing bullshit IE: Retarded_Username, it could take more of a bad ass approach, involve gangs, mafias, cops, robbers, corrupt business, take property buying to a new level.
Minecraft
I wasn't going to include this here but I will, Minecraft is a large, very active community! Take advantage of it, advertise the SA:MP server in the announcements on there, mention that SA:MP is free! Keep updating your server, post many update logs on Planet Minecraft every 48 hours announcing the latest and greatest feature you have! People will come, it's bound to work, at points I had 50+ people when my server was running in offline mode, it's definitely worth it. Another great promotion for this would be Youtube, make a common youtube video. But make sure you have the latest and greatest security features also, Obfuscator (anti xray), various anti spams, no TNT/fire spread, IP loggers, range bans, even anti floods, people WILL actually code their own bots to load up 100's of accounts to spam servers, compensate for this. Offline mode is a dangerous way to run, unless you get the best in security. Minecraft is a large community waiting to be milked for views, put the server IP on the homepage of the site.
I think this will conclude this topic for now, I will be posting it/making it sticky in various sections of the forum, this is what needs to be done, and if people are going to be too lazy to do something about it then you might as well engrave on the grave stone "R.I.P Las Venturas Playground, death do to no dedication and laziness."
Thanks for reading,
- xBlueXFoxx
I will be posting this topic in 2 different sections of the forum, beta, and in the Las Venturas Playground section, this is so everyone can read it, please beta tests/developers respond in the beta section topic as I will be referring to this as the primary topic. I'm just posting this publicly to let people know my current opinion on LVP, where it stands, and how it can be majorly improved.
First of all, the server is a mess, the site is a mess, everything is a cluttered mess, there's no simplicity, no UI, attempts have been made in the server to make things simpler bit it's just totally wrong.
Website
Lets start with the website...
The website when you first go to sa-mp.nl, you notice that you have a ton of things immediately shoved in your face, including the latest update post from January, this spells disaster, people don't want to see this when they first visit and I do believe it can be simplified. LVP has various connections, servers, and other things, but you don't see any of them there really. I will admit the theme is professional and clean but people simply do not want to read a million walls of text when they first get on. I will use my website for a reference (http://GamerDivision.net/index.php).
If you look at my site you can see that the server IP's are cleanly listed, ready for players to join, LVP has a(n) TeamSpeak, IRC, Minecraft, and SA:MP server, but only the SA:MP server are to be seen on there, and this is a big mistake, people are simply not going to know what to navigate to if they're coming in from the site.
The IRC page, the web version that exists on LVP currently, the Mibbit one, I had to actually go to the forum and run a search just to find it, people are not willing to constantly do this, this issue should be addressed as it would only take 2 minutes of someones time.
The forum theme, it doesn't look bad but everyone has seen the default SMF theme, it's bland and boring, Kase was supposed to do work modifying the theme but clearly this has never happened so I would at least like if someone checked out and tested a few decent themes on the site, who knows, ask people if they like them? See what their opinions are on them? Here's a link to two decent ones I found and just recently posted in the .dev channel.
http://www.dzinerstudio.com/index.php?ac...iew&id=135
http://www.dzinerstudio.com/index.php?ac...w;down=140
SA:MP Server
People who join the SA:MP server are rarely there to stay, and are likely not going to stay if the server contains these things.
- No players
- Crapper UI
- A messy stunt map
- Hackers, lack of staff unable to do anything about it.
- Cluttered messy gamemode.
The LVP gamemode should be redone immediately, no more playing around testing out 2.95.38372523ABDED, the coding needs to be optimized, and redone properly as been bitched about for years now. Think of it this way, you have a box of wires, it needs to be untangled and reorganized, coding is the same method and there should definitely be a plan for how the code will be organized neatly.
For example (and also I think this should definitely be done), the announcements in-game are the same thing over and over again, people get tired of seeing them countless times and just learn to ignore them, mainly because they're never updated with accurate rules that someone who poorly understands English, or just lacks the brain capacity to tell their elbow from their ass can manager to comprehend. The announcements should have their own section, folder of coding that redirects to a simple line by line file that could easily be changed, modified, updated, to allow easy access to have common announcement updates. I'm no coder, but I know for fact this is easy to do and easily possible, so there's really no reason to pull the lazy card with this.
I would also like to just throw out a link to this topic since I'm on this subject. I'm glad this has been addressed before but it should be taken up another notch.
http://forum.sa-mp.nl/index.php?topic=28616.0
Another thing is, what to do when you join the server? That's a good question, what is there to do? People who play here for awhile that there's nothing to do, a wild stunt map appears! *zing* The stunt map the last time I've seen it is a cluttered mess and should be updated, redone from the ground up, maybe just remove it from LV completely, the lack of draw distance on the ramps I really love, because it gives me the chance to experience crashing my plane into a random object in mid flight, because we all love that.
The stunt map needs cleaned up as much as the server itself, when joining other nice servers, I see a clean UI, a warm welcome, a reason to stay, a hook with bait on it. People like seeing their stats, level ups when DM'ing, this is what we need, when you get a kill you should be rewarded and you should know you've been rewarded, this is what DeathMatch needs in the server.
Now for the horrid part, LVP needs roleplay, I know, I just said it, but not some kiddy tea party roleplay just something more dynamic and likely to catch peoples attention longer than the property system will with its max money/property limit, we need level ups, we need some kind of credit/score based system, to let you know you've been in LVP for a long time and that you're progressing in it. This is why games like CoD/battlefield are so successful, you keep playing to get yourself to the next level to get that golden AK47/Desert Eagle you've been wanting.
Minigames should be more rewarding, advertised more, just a bit more everything to them to make them just stand out a bit more, in LVP 3.0, I demand these to be the center of attention, not just a side thing, they're fun as hell, but only when you can find people to play them with you, which brings my onto my next subject.
Development
As said before, coding is a mess, there should be a more organized way developing is handled around here, instead it's always a constant worry about leaked information and when things do happen in LVP people overreact, so what if there's a random Hooger wanting a veteran tag, or a random someone bruting Matthias' account and ripping all the private information on LVP and posting it on a registered domain with a private host. Things need to be less private, more community interactive, it's been in discussion before, LVP going open source, there should be limitations to this of course, because we simply don't want a bunch of LVP's popping up on the server list, something that stamps the name LVP on it. LVP should take more community advice on features, make the CSI section more open and improve on this once time comes.
Rebuilding LVP from the ground up, this would be time consuming, but does it really have to be? Coding is not simple, going through thousands and thousands of lines, but there should definitely be a much more organized system, for example as I posted before about the announcements in-game, they should be organized, each "plugin" having it's own root then an easily managed file outside of it's root file, both being in an isolated folder/section. Similar to how Minecraft bukkit servers run, you have the core that links to everything in the "Plugins" folder, then for each plugin have their own folder. Then each "Plugin" should be universal, easily removed/modifiable, the core of LVP should read each directory in that "Plugin" folder as a plugin, automatically load, and just be much more simple and dynamic.
Example:
Root>(CoreFiles)
Root>LVP>Plugins>Announcements>(Configuration file.porno)
Root>LVP>Plugins>(File that tells core that directory "Announcements" exists.porno)
Simple to understand method, correct? Basically allows features/plugins to be easily hot swapped, removed, added, edited, etc. The existing features should not be removed, just converted over to a new more proper/optimal method of being handled, it allows you to find bugs much more easier.
Community interaction
Something LVP lacks, always has lacked, and really needs to fix. The CSI section of the forum should be more public, should be handled by at least beta testers, people who post on my forums in our support section are allowed to reply to others topics, this allows users to respond, and get their answers faster.
http://gamerdivision.net/index.php?board=15.0
More active announcements on the homepage, as said before, I always love waking up to the morning and reading the hottest news of January.
Trolls should be punished different and more often, we love a common smart-ass of course, but not to the extend that they're still trying to draw from a dry, inactive forum just to pull of his small trollgasm. This makes LVP's staff look bad, draws people away from the forums, and makes the people who actually would love to help and do something about it, face palm.
Ask for peoples opinions, don't just give them an inactive CSI topic and leave them. Ask a bit more or else you will not receive, simple as that. There's no way developers are not going to know what people want unless you let them voice their opinion, and of course, slam the door on those with "opinions" that are to make LVP go down the drain, grenades are cheap, you can toss them in middle of people legitimately fighting, it's cheap, they're not a bad ass, the people who join them trolling are just as retarded, ignore them. BUT, do not ignore those who actually post a legitimate, good idea, at least let them know that their idea is not being accepted rather than just leaving them hanging constantly.
Role Play
I personally am not a role player, but a majority of people are, people find it fun, it is fun, it's a fact. LVP simply needs to understand that it's a fact, not an opinion, LVP does need role play features, advertise somewhat with roleplay, to draw in more players. But it doesn't have to be pathetic role playing bullshit IE: Retarded_Username, it could take more of a bad ass approach, involve gangs, mafias, cops, robbers, corrupt business, take property buying to a new level.
Minecraft
I wasn't going to include this here but I will, Minecraft is a large, very active community! Take advantage of it, advertise the SA:MP server in the announcements on there, mention that SA:MP is free! Keep updating your server, post many update logs on Planet Minecraft every 48 hours announcing the latest and greatest feature you have! People will come, it's bound to work, at points I had 50+ people when my server was running in offline mode, it's definitely worth it. Another great promotion for this would be Youtube, make a common youtube video. But make sure you have the latest and greatest security features also, Obfuscator (anti xray), various anti spams, no TNT/fire spread, IP loggers, range bans, even anti floods, people WILL actually code their own bots to load up 100's of accounts to spam servers, compensate for this. Offline mode is a dangerous way to run, unless you get the best in security. Minecraft is a large community waiting to be milked for views, put the server IP on the homepage of the site.
I think this will conclude this topic for now, I will be posting it/making it sticky in various sections of the forum, this is what needs to be done, and if people are going to be too lazy to do something about it then you might as well engrave on the grave stone "R.I.P Las Venturas Playground, death do to no dedication and laziness."
Thanks for reading,
- xBlueXFoxx
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